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Sunday, June 30, 2013

Last month my team and I had our semi-regular fun day on the company's dime! The plan was to get our paint on and then chow down on some Greek food - sounds good, right!?

At our last happy hour (not on the company's dime) we all noticed a cute place across the street called Spirited Art - so we all Googled it and found out they host classes where an instructor leads a painting session and everyone who attends leaves with a finished product! Fun! We talked about how that may be a good team-builder because there would be different skill levels going in and we could help each other, while keeping each other's OCD in check. :)

So I set up a private class for us to paint the Richmond skyline. First, let's digest this place:

When you walk in, how can you miss this huge color wheel made from paint chips? AWESOME!

The walls are covered with paintings they offer, along with ideas for parties, like girls' night out, birthday parties, date night, school events, corporate team-building, etc. For date night, you each paint a smaller canvas but the two paintings complement each other, like one is a glass of red wine and the other white.

My favorite (other than the skyline, of course) was the leg lamp, but I guess I didn't take a picture?

They were ready for us and had the skyline drawn on tracing paper ready to be transferred onto a canvas

Once we had our outlines drawn, an instructor led us through the actual painting process...none of us were confident about this step, but she made it really easy:

A bunch of Type-A's trying to be meticulous about something they've never done before brought out some frustration in all of us (especially me!) but the good thing about art is there is never one right way to complete a task and imperfection is a good thing. At least in my opinion.

Here is the finished product:

And, for fun, a close-up:

After we loosened up our shoulders and relaxed from the day's creative part, we moved on to the 38th Annual Richmond Greek Festival for lunch! If you live in the #RVA and haven't been to this festival, it's worth a few hours - authentic Greek food, music, and dancing...and they have a drive-through if you just want to get a quick dinner on the way home from work.

We all loaded up our plates with a little of everything - pastitsio, spanikopita, baklava, etc. It was all wonderful, and we just sat under the tent enjoying the sights and sounds of the festival along with the nice breeze cooling us off on an otherwise HOT afternoon.

We all agreed we needed a nap after the huge meal, so we parted ways and I did just that: went home to take a nap! Isn't work fun?!